A Letter to Grover Cleveland / On His False Inaugural Address, The Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude Of The People

A LETTER
GROVER CLEVELAND,
His False Inaugural Address, The Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and The Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude of the People.
LYSANDER SPOONER.
BOSTON:
BENJ. R. TUCKER, PUBLISHER.
1886.
The author reserves his copyright in this letter.
To Grover Cleveland :
Sir,—Your inaugural address is probably as honest, sensible, and consistent a one as that of any president within the last fifty years, or, perhaps, as any since the foundation of the government. If, therefore, it is false, absurd, self-contradictory, and ridiculous, it is not (as I think) because you are personally less honest, sensible, or consistent than your predecessors, but because the government itself—according to your own description of it, and according to the practical administration of it for nearly a hundred years—is an utterly and palpably false, absurd, and criminal one. Such praises as you bestow upon it are, therefore, necessarily false, absurd, and ridiculous.
Thus you describe it as a government pledged to do equal and exact justice to all men.
Did you stop to think what that means? Evidently you did not; for nearly, or quite, all the rest of your address is in direct contradiction to it.